


Paths not your own (unthought knowns)

by maharetr



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Memory Loss, Mission Fic, Pre-Movie(s), Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 16:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1947561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/pseuds/maharetr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers nothing.<br/>There is nothing to remember.<br/>But there are things he <i>knows</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paths not your own (unthought knowns)

Before he opens his eyes, he knows that they brought him up from sedation hours too early — he knows it in the agonizing sting of nerves, in his achingly fatigued muscles. He lies perfectly still, naked under the sheet, and tries to get his bearings before they realize he's awake.

No luck — there are footsteps heading his way, quiet, authoritative thuds across the floor. He opens his eyes, blinking against the bright lights, trying to focus.

The person that leans over the gurney ... he has no memory of this man, but he _knows_.

"General," he says. He tries to make it sharp, alert, but he his throat is still raw, and the words come out as a rasp. Maybe they put him down too early last time.

"Soldier," the general says. "We have a mission for you. Briefing is in five hours."

A quick glance at the set of the general's shoulders and the scowl, and the Soldier knows to avert his gaze and ask nothing; this will not be a conversation.

"Yes, sir," he says.

The general leaves. The Soldier works on swallowing, getting moisture into his raw throat before he starts on flexing his hands and feet, reorienting himself to his body. His spatial awareness is returning. Somewhere behind him, technicians start hosing down the cryo chamber.

He knows that he is cold.

~*~

The scientists hydrate him, and perform a battery of tests on his arm: working him through rotations, flexibility, and reaction times. They test the electrical discharge, and he leaves the target dish of wood chips blazing, and a scientist scrambling for the fire extinguisher. They test the rest of his body, too: shine lights in his eyes, draw blood, check his stamina, inject him with countless things, and ask questions until he is hoarse again. 

Whatever they're testing for, he seems to pass; he is hosed down and dried off, dressed, and escorted to his briefing.

There is a clock on the far wall. He registers it in his initial scope of the room: the armed guards on either side of the door; the table with the general and a major sitting behind it; and the clock above them. It is 1400 hours precisely. They had not let him keep the date of his last mission, and he savours the tiny spark of knowledge. He wonders what year it is.

The general pushes a file across the table, and the Soldier’s focus narrows immediately. 

A situation has developed: a nuclear engineer has abandoned the cause and must be contained. He is believed to be carrying formulae and data that he had attempted to conceal; the Soldier is given a photograph.

"This is what an external storage device looks like. You're looking for that or something very like it. Color is irrelevant. Don't get it wet, don't get grit in it, try not to drop it. Do _not_ drop anything on it. It is not in any way bulletproof. Damage to the drive will be regarded as failure. Any questions?"

He flips through the rest of the file: photos of the engineer, known likely locations, likely obstacles. The file is black with strike-outs. This is a need-to-know mission, and there is apparently not much he needs to know. He flips back to the start of the file, looking for intel of his own. At the top of a mostly blacked-out memo mentioning the engineer's more likely boltholes, he brushes his fingertips over the date. The year is 2009. He has no questions.

~*~

He is driven out to an airfield hangar. The air is thin and cold; the sky is clear. He does not shiver.

The battery of tests resume, but this is military familiarisation testing, and he loses himself in the rhythm of stripping down and reassembling the weapons he’s supplied with. He learns the exact amount of pressure to control the rise of the Skorpion, that the rifle pulls to the left, and that the pair of SIG-Sauers are a dead hit, every time. The sidearms are a comfortable weight in his thigh holsters. The sergeant on the other side of the table makes a tiny, satisfied-sounding grunt. The Soldier glances up at that. Maybe the Soldier had worked well with these weapons last mission. Maybe they had spoken together about weapons before. The man's expression is blank, now, though, and the Soldier is careful to school his own expression accordingly.

At the end of the familiarisation, they give him the rest of his uniform, his glasses, and his mask. He is grateful for the long sleeve and the gloves, their thin layer of warmth. The Winter Soldier is not supposed to show relief, so he does not.

"You have night vision in those things now." The sergeant points to the goggles as the Soldier pulls on the gloves. _Now_ suggests a past time, an earlier now, and the Soldier steals covert glances as the sergeant demonstrates how to toggle it off and on. There is nothing familiar about the man's face at all. Still...

"Thank you," the Soldier says as he puts on the glasses. The sergeant turns away without a word. The Winter Soldier is not supposed to feel disappointment, so he does not show it.

~*~

They fly for several hours. He braces himself with his left arm in the webbing, cradling the sniper rifle in his lap, staring at the floor. His handler team talk across him in the half-shout that counts as soft voices in the roar of a military cargo plane.

They land at an anonymous airstrip outside Odessa. It is nearly evening now; the sun is pale yellow on the horizon. The mask does nothing to warm the air, which still makes his lungs ache with every breath. The tint in the glasses helps with the snow reflection.

They give him a vehicle. The glowing panels of information in the dash throw him briefly, but the basics are the same: keys, ignition, accelerator, brake. _Test your weapons_ — It’s a man’s voice in his head, calm and measured, and he doesn't know whose voice that is, but it's good advice. He pushes the car through its paces, tearing around the airstrip, testing turning and controlling skids, settling into how it handles.

It's coming on for dark when he double checks the best route to the target's safe house, checks his comms are operational, and confirms his check-in procedure and schedule. None of his handler team wish him luck.

He drives away from the airstrip at a leisurely pace; he's been given many hours to locate and establish a position before first check-in. Besides, he's heading into civilian territory, and he does not wish to be noticed before he’s ready to make his move.

He has a purpose. He has a mission with a target and an unknown amount of time ahead of him, lying in wait and watching for that split-second window to act. The earlier he settles into that mindset, the easier it will be to sustain through the potentially many hours of alert patience, eye to scope.

So he lets his mind settle into calm surveillance, even if can only observe far as the edges of his headlights, and he drives. It means, half an hour later, when he's on a similarly quiet stretch of road, his scanning is somewhere below the edge of conscious thought.

He approaches a bend, slowing for it, and registers the headlights approaching from the other direction. A white, non-descript vehicle. The white car is slowing, too, but even though they're slightly faster, he still gets a brief flash on the driver: red hair, woman. She passes too fast for him to see the person in the passenger seat.

His scanning is still automatic, and his body is responding similarly reflexively: clear the bend and drop speed enough for a long, leisurely U-turn on the still-empty road.

Conscious thought and assessment doesn't kick in until he's accelerating, working to close the gap. They're little packets of knowledge: there had been no mention of target movement for the next 24 hours, let alone an escort, _but_... the car doesn't match any mentioned in the briefing, _but_... When he catches up enough to read the licence plate, it's not one that matches any plates in the mission file, _but_...

The Soldier does not know what comes after the but. He slows down, slightly, enough to not ram her bumper, and stays close, too close. The woman is probably a civilian. She will her tap her brakes irritably, maybe pull over nervously to let him pass.

He inches closer, and his side mirror explodes.

He reacts before he even registers the gunshot — he snatches the Skorpion from his back, smashes his left elbow through his window, follows through with his forearm and the weapon, and empties a clip into her back left tire.

His ears are ringing from the reports, but he doesn't need to hear to know he's got a hit: the car fishtails, but she corrects and steadies. He pulls his arm back inside, still not thinking, and drops below the sightline of the dashboard, holding the wheel steady with his right hand.

Her return fire smashes through the windscreen, showering him with little pebbles of glass. Icy wind howls into the vehicle. He waits, one beat, two, hunched in the cold, and hauls himself up.

The headrest is gone, along with one headlight, and the vehicle is beeping some sort of alarm, but the steering wheel still responds. He steers the next bend with his knees, reloading, and firing through the wreckage of the windscreen.

The second tire goes, spraying up sparks against the road. The car swings around in a lazy, heavy arc, crashing through the guardrail and down out of sight.

He jams on his brakes and listens as her car smashes its way down the hillside. The Soldier assesses fast. There's enough shoulder, just, to park the car across the damaged rail. He kills the engine, figures out how to pop the hood, and then raises it on his way past. The bullet holes will be obvious to anything more than a cursory glance, but looking like an abandoned breakdown might help.

The slope is steep but traversable thanks to the path her car had flattened. The Soldier takes it in a controlled skid. He turns the night vision on, and the world lights up in varying shades of luminescent green. The car had rolled at least once before coming to rest upside down some distance away. The driver's door is wedged forever open by the compressed frame. The overhead light glows weakly in the dark, silhouetting the bodyguard in palest green.

She’s kneeling with her back to him on what was the ceiling of the vehicle, sawing at ... the target's seatbelt, the Soldier deduces. He can't see past her, but he knows when the target falls free; the man screams, the short, sharp shriek of someone in great pain. The Soldier _knows_ that sound.

He needs to be careful here: the drive might not even be in the vehicle, but if it is, he needs neat, precise work to minimize damage. _The drive is not in any way bulletproof._ He turns right-side forward, trying to reduce light reflection off his metal arm, draws his sidearm and begins his approach. 

He’s moving quietly, avoiding the patches of snow, but she still whirls – as best as she can within in the car – her own sidearm at the ready. She’s staring past him, but still aiming unnervingly close to his actual location. He drops into a crouch and holds position, waiting for her to turn away, to continue the attempted extraction.

She doesn’t. She stays in the vehicle, crouching on one knee to shield her assignment with her body. There are rivulets of dark green – blood – down one side of her face. She’s holding perfectly still, head tilted to listen, gaze scanning, scanning.

The target is too wounded for her to move, the Soldier realizes. Possibly he’s dying already, sobbing and groaning with pain. _Protect your mission_ , the voice in his head says. _Bring the threat to you_. He still doesn’t know whose voice that is, especially considering _he’s_ the threat right now. Either way, she’s performing flawlessly: he has no clear shot, and he can’t move to find a better one without risking giving away his position. 

_Tough,_ the voice says, sternly. _Improvise, then._ It’s good advice. The Soldier tightens his finger on the trigger, considering ricochets, bullet momentum, and the likely positioning of a dying man on the now-floor of a vehicle.

He rises out of the crouch and shoots the bodyguard in the stomach.

She shouts in pain, firing even as she falls forward, but her shots are wild and he stands and strides to the wreck. She is making tiny, agonized hisses between her teeth, but there is no other sound. He can smell gasoline, and blood.

He grabs the bodyguard by the back of her jacket and hauls, throwing her out of the way. She lands in a sprawling heap not far away, writhing. He kicks her weapon aside and turns his attention to the car.

The target had been cowering, hunched behind his bodyguard; the bullet had blown the back of his head open. The man’s brains steam in the cold air. He had died with his arms wrapped around a bag clutched to his chest, rather than instinctively and futilely trying to protect his head, and the Soldier wiggles the bag free from the dead man’s grip.

The Winter Soldier is not supposed to show relief, but there’s no one here to see him exhale in wordless, directionless gratitude: two drives, intact and dry and small enough to slip securely into one of his pockets.

The Soldier backs out of the car. The bodyguard is still alive, has dragged herself further away from the wreck. She’s still now, but aware enough to turn her head enough to track his approach.

She is an enemy operative with a failed mission, badly injured even before her handlers retrieved her. If she had been looming over him with a weapon, he would have opened his arms, welcomed her bullets as a quick mercy. 

Her arms are not open. Her hand is sweeping the ground, groping for her sidearm, a rock, anything. She’s holding her other hand against her side, trying to compress her own gut wound with her bare hand even as he looms over her with a weapon.

She is not his target. She is not a known part of his mission at all. If she is as skilled a witness as she is a fighter, he should shoot her. But she is not a known part of his mission. There had been a lot of blacked out information in that file, and maybe she had been under that. He has been … disciplined ... for deviating from the mission before. He doesn’t not remember the infraction, but the _memory_ of the pain makes his finger hesitate on the trigger.

He should shoot her, but a tiny tremor has begun in his right arm. He takes a breath to steady it, but the malfunction is worsening, making his aim falter. _Compensate_. He cups his left hand under the gun butt, a tiny chink of metal on metal, and light glints off his left arm as patches of pale green.

Aiming between her eyes means he’s staring at her. The night vision is very good; it’s amplifying the car light and giving him a detailed look at her blood-covered face. She is breathing as slow and as deep as she can, trying to control the pain and panic, trying to ward off hyperventilation. 

Her gaze is flitting between where his face must be and the gun now. No, the arm. She is staring at his arm, and her breath-control is slipping; she gasps in two half-breaths, and her mouth contorts hard, twisting on the exhale and making the shape of a name. 

He is aware that his heart rate has settled, that his arm has relaxed that minuscule amount. He isn’t shaking anymore.

He takes his finger off the trigger.

The Winter Soldier is trained to kill, he is trained to assess and respond to changing circumstances in order to perform his mission. He is not trained for this; he does not have a mission parameter for “letting someone live”. _Tough_ , the voice says again. _Improvise, then_.

He tries to think. The Winter Soldier has never been supplied with a medikit; he has nothing to give her. Besides, he is a ghost; he is supposed to leave nothing behind but cold, still death.

“Does anyone know where you are?” he asks, and it’s only when the words are out of his mouth that he realizes he’s spoken in Russian.

"Nyet," she rasps, and it sounds like a denial of many things. She's _staring_ up at him now, searchingly, like she's trying to find his eyes in the shadows, behind his mask.

He nods, once, and turns to assess the situation. The car’s fuel tank is well and truly ruptured. He can smell it from here, but there’s no smoke from under the hood, nothing that says the car is going to burn by itself.

He takes off his left glove, turns his palm outwards towards the wreck. The arm performed well in testing, and it responds efficiently now: the electrical pulse crackles through the air, and ignites fumes with a muted _whumph_ , tracing the spreading puddle back in a flare of light and heat that blinds him through the night vision with its searing whiteness.

He rips the glasses off, squeezing his eyes closed against the painful afterimages. When he opens his eyes again, the world is red and orange, and his skin is... his body is... 

The Soldier _knows_ what it is to sweat, to push his enhanced body to the limits in the name of the mission, as part of lab testing, for any number of reasons that would leave him shaking and exhausted. This is ... it cannot be the only time, the first time, he has been sweating while standing still, standing calm. This is being _warm_ , he realizes, the heat over his skin, this tingle, and he steps into it until he wants to wince, until his face and exposed skin is dry and sore with it, and knows his left arm will be too hot to touch. He turns, lifting his arms from his sides, letting the heat blast the back of his body, and his head drops forward in involuntary relief.

The Winter Soldier is not supposed to marvel, is not supposed to care, but he stands there dumbly, watching the orange glow flicker over his hands, over skin and metal.

He looks back and she’s staring at him. In the flickering firelight, there are tears on her face. She is far enough away to avoid getting burnt, close enough that the heat might help ward off shock and hypothermia. Certainly the glow and the smoke are going to be enough to attract attention. He wants to stay near the fire, stay near the warmth, but he needs to be gone. It still takes a moment for him to turn and walk clear of the fire.

Part way up the slope, he turns the night vision back on, but the greens are abruptly, lurchingly _wrong_. He scrabbles up the rest of the slope and yanks off the glasses. The dark is better, the dark is _real_ , but it’s not enough — in his head, she’s still staring up at him, glowing green, her eyes searching for his, and something is scrabbling inside his chest, a wild panic. He is choking on it, and he fumbles at the catches of the mask, clawing at it until his face is free. His eyes are streaming from the cold, and it hurts to breathe.

He is not supposed to feel this way. He is not supposed to feel anything at all.

Telling himself that does not help. He stares at his assigned vehicle — damaged but operational — retrieves the sniper rifle bag from under the seat, and walks away.

His mission is complete. He should return for debrief. He should be radioing in, in fact, requesting extraction.

He walks for a long time, long enough that he slips back into the rhythm of scanning, scanning, even though his mission is done. _Mission successful_ , he reminds himself, touching the shape of the drives in his pocket. He watches for vehicles, dropping out of sight off the road whenever there is the glow of headlights on the horizon, or he hears the hum of an engine.

He walks long enough for someone to notice the fire, for there to be too many civilians onsite for a clean-up team to take out the bodyguard.

The mission is complete, but he is still in enemy territory; he should not be tracking irrelevant details. He should not be noticing the pinpricks of starlight he can see in the sky through the trees, and when he rounds the next bend he should be noting the lack of cover on the open hillside and taking evasive action, he should — 

The Soldier stands in the open and stares upwards. He knows constellations as navigational tools, but he’s never seen a night sky like this, clear and sharp and endless. When he tilts his head back, his view is clouded on every exhale by freezing breath, but he holds his inhale for as long as he can, keeps his head tilted back despite the ache in his shoulders, and just _stares_ at the night sky spread above him, a massive expanse of glittering stars. He holds his breath until he’s dizzy with it.

" _Winter Soldier, come in?_ "

He doesn’t startle. He just squeezes his eyes closed for a beat longer than needed. He starts walking again, angling for the security of the treeline.

" _Winter Soldier, this is Base. Confirm position established?"_ The voice sounds bored, perfunctory. He raises his hand to his ear.

"Mission complete," he says. "Am on foot. Requesting extraction from entry road."

It is Base's turn to startle. They send a vehicle, and comm in, cautiously, from hundreds of meters out, as if they're not sure what they'll find, or they're worried he will shoot them all. He toys with the idea, briefly, but keeps his weapons holstered as they come over the horizon. There are two armed guards and the driver. The drive back to the airstrip is utterly silent.

The head hander strides to meet them.

“Report,” the man growls. The man’s hands are flitting over his firearm, over the Taser on his belt. The Soldier does not know this man, but he _knows_ that he reports only to the general.

“Mission complete,” he repeats, and no more. He stands still, calm, and does not let his hand twitch to cover the drives. He does not fear this handler or his weapons; all the handler can inflict is pain.

The handler’s jaw works, and he glares, but he steps aside. They let the Soldier board the plane under his own steam. It feels like more of a victory than it possibly should.

In the air, the handling team keeps their distance. He slips his hand into the webbing to anchor himself, and draws up his knees, losing himself in the crackle of the flames, trying to warm his body from the memory alone. The team are trying to talk quietly over the roar of the engines, but he hears snatches of sentences, hears the words _mission deviation_ and _unstable again_ and tension creeps into his muscles.

He is braced for attack, for _something_ , when the plane lands. They let him disembark the plane. There are four armed guards at the bottom of the steps, and the Soldier _knows_ this is unusual. They fall into formation around him, and his skin prickles with unease.

Outside the briefing room, he hesitates at the doorway. After debrief, there will be no mission, no goal. He does not want lose this quite yet, but the guards are hemming him in; there’s nowhere else to go. He steps forward.

It is crowded in the room: the general and the major at the table in front of him again, the guards behind him flanking the door. But there are also the scientists this time, and several military intelligence officers in their white shirts.

The tension in the room is palpable.

It is not his place to question. He stands to attention, awaiting an order. It is 0944 hours, by the clock.

“Mission report,” the general says, low and level and terrifying.

“Mission successful, sir.” He takes the drives from his pocket, and steps forward to place them on the table. “Intelligence retrieved, and target removed.”

The general looks around the room, at the military intelligence officers, at the scientists.

“What the fuck happened out there?” It’s not directed at the Soldier, not specifically, but his stomach tenses anyway. No one speaks. The Soldier takes a steadying breath.

“The target had left the safe house, sir. The target and his escort were intercepted on a road out of Odessa, they —.”

The general holds up a hand.

“Escort,” he says, even quieter, but it’s directed at the intelligence officers. “Who was this escort? Why didn’t we know about him?”

"All our intel said the target was holed up at the safe house, awaiting extraction in two days' time, sir." It's one of the intelligence officers, sounding far more steady and calm than the Soldier feels.

“You saw the engineer in the car, and went after them?” The general says.

“Yes.” It is a lie. It is a lie by omission, but it is a lie. He realizes he is breathing in and holding for five, exhaling for five. Panic management, trying to ward off hyperventilation. He makes himself speak again.

“I shot out their tires, and forced the car off the road into a ravine," he says. "I shot the bodyguard to get at the target, killed the target, and retrieved the drives.”

“And you killed the bodyguard, yes?” It’s a casual question, an afterthought, a tying up of loose ends. He should have, he should have, he should have. His palm sweats.

“Her wounds were severe,” he manages. “She was not going to live.”

The general goes still. “She?” the general echoes. The room goes still. "She was young, yes?" It's not really a question. "Her hair was red?"

The Soldier wants to fall to the floor, curl in on himself against the coldness in that voice. He tries to get some moisture back into his mouth, and finds he cannot. He nods instead, wordlessly.

" _That_ ," the intelligence officer says, cutting off whatever the general has been about to yell. " _That_ was why we didn't know someone had been assigned to the target. Why we didn't even know he was on the move."

The general hasn't taken his eyes off the Soldier.

“You left her alive,” the General says. A statement, quiet, mild. The terror is so strong he sways on his feet. "Send a strike team to the crash site," the general says, an utterly calm order.

"Sir," someone says behind the Soldier. "The wreck burned, sir. It was visible for miles. If Romanova’s dead, her body has been long extracted, if she’s alive, she’s alive and inaccessible.”

The Winter Soldier is not supposed to show relief; he doesn’t let his breathing change, doesn’t blink.

"I _don't care_." The general smacks the table, hard. The Soldier does not, does not, flinch. "Send them as bumbling tourists. Send them as forensic investigators. Just _send them_."

He's aware of people shuffling, leaving. He cannot think clearly enough to gauge how many. More than is possibly needed, but the Soldier supposes many people would like the excuse to leave.

"Did you know who the escort was, Soldier?" It's directed at him, but it's _for_ the tense, still scientists huddled in his peripheral vision. He shakes his head.

"Why didn't you kill her?"

"She wasn't part of the mission," the Soldier manages. "She might — she —" He should be standing ramrod straight, but all he can do is hunch, keep his eyes fixed on the edge of the table in front of him. 

"I don't know." It comes out as a frightened whisper. It is one thing to not remember, it is another to _know_ something so strongly, and not know why. To have to probe the edges of his knowledge and feel the void stretching in all directions.

The general snarls, an inarticulate sound of rage. The Soldier fights to breathe. The general exhales, hard. "He doesn't know who she was." The general is back to dangerously quiet, and this time he's offering it to the scientists directly, statements in the forms of questions, in the form of booby traps. "He doesn't know who she was, and yet he let her live."

“All – all…” the scientist at the front of the group clutches his clipboard to his chest. “All of the Asset’s memories of Romanova — of training _any_ of the recruits — were removed. ” The scientist manages.

 _Romanova_. The name means nothing to him. He cannot connect it to the bodyguard writhing on the ground. He’s trained people? _Test your weapons_. There is nothing to hold onto in in mind — he fights to keep his balance amongst waves of vertigo.

“He trusted his instincts,” the major interjects quietly. “He trusted his instincts and salvaged the mission.”

“He shouldn’t _have_ any fucking _instincts_ ,” the general roars.

"He has instincts, sir." It's one of the older scientists, somewhere behind the Soldier's shoulder. The Soldier does not dare turn to see, but the man's voice is steady. The Soldier does not remember this man, but the general does: the general turns, jaw clenched, and lets the scientist speak.

"He has instincts, and muscle memory, and knowledge. He _has_ to have these, so he knows how to fire a weapon. He has to keep feelings — he needs to fear mission failure. It's a balance, sir. The memory wipes ... we can wipe him into compliance, to a certain point."

The general pinches the bridge of his nose. "Why now? He’s been stable on short-stint missions for years. Why is he malfunctioning _now_?"

"He’s the only long-term subject we have, sir. We don’t _know_ what the long-term effects of memory-removal are, especially if he’s then directly presented with triggers. This is not an exact science. There's —."

"Exact science? I don't _care_ about the science. I don't care about his _feelings_. Is he stable enough to deploy? Can I use _my goddamn asset_?"

The scientist with the clipboard flinches in the Soldier's peripheral vision. "We... we've had some success with applying progressively higher voltage rates, with making sure the serum levels stay below, uh —" the man tries to find something in his notes and fails."—a certain level before the wipes, and applying immediate cryofreeze to delay healing. We —"

"Wipe him _and_ freeze him, then," the general snarls. "Wipe him hard. I don't care if you need to teach him to walk again after, I want a functional asset prepared to actually _kill people_. Jesus."

There's quiet commotion behind him; he has not moved, and no one dares touch him to make him move. He moves so they do not touch him.

The guards shepherd him along, and he lets them, closes his eyes completely. He doesn't care if he falls. Against the blackness behind his eyelids, he can conjure memories — _memories_ — of the bodyguard staring up at him, of the warmth of the fire. He can remember the sensation of tilting his head back, of losing himself in the sight of the night sky. _2009_ he thinks, deliberately. _Her name was Romanova. This mission was 2009_.

He stops when the scientists do, sits when they guide him down, lets them push him back into the chair. He opens his mouth for the bite guard.

 _Warmth_ , he thinks. _Stars_. But they're just words; he cannot summon awe with the mouthguard forcing his teeth apart, pooling spit in the back of his throat. He cannot conjure relaxed warmth with the restraints too tight around his arms, with sweat cooling on his chest. He thinks them anyway. 

The machinery whines into its starting sequence. The chair beneath him is vibrating, and the arms swing down – he squeezes his eyes closed, but cannot stop the gasp as the pads press against his face, push against his cheekbones. He’s choking on the mouthguard. _2009, Romanova, fire, st –_.

Agony convulses him. _2009, Romanova_ , he manages in the between times. Waiting for the pain is no respite at all. His fists clench uselessly. Fire, stars — . Another wave smashes through him. He's screaming; he can feel it in his throat, but there's no sound above the ringing in his ears. _warmth, st —_. There is no boundary between the pain and his body, between his body and anything.

 _— warm stars —_

There is only pain.

Eventually, there is nothing.

Sometime later there is movement, and agony of nerves firing and misfiring. They take out the mouthguard, and something whimpers.

Upright is nauseating dizziness, even if someone else is doing all the work. Hands, plasticy but faintly warm under that, gripping, lifting, tightening straps, strapping upright into place, pushing things into... into his mouth? Open, then. Open for them. They're done, the hands are gone, he's alone, hanging from the straps, and there's clanging and he's alone and cold and hanging and he...there's a face looking back at him, faint. They stare at each other for a while, wonderingly. The man looks so tired, and so frightened. _It's all right_ , he wants to say. But it's getting cold, so cold, and please, not again. 

The agony is freezing this time, and his nerves howl in pain. He tilts his head up, involuntarily trying to get _up_ , get _away_ from the burning cold. He tilts his head back, his breath misting, obscuring his vision of the metal wall, the top of the world.

 _Stars_ , he thinks, and then there is nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to [crumblingwalls](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crumblingwalls/pseuds/crumblingwalls) for the line-by-line beta, prodding, and handholding -- this would not have been finished without you. Thanks to [lady_krysis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_krysis/profile) for the encouragement. <3
> 
> All mistakes are my own. If you spot any, you're welcome to mention in a comment.
> 
> The more obscure powers of Bucky's arm were gratefully taken from [here]().


End file.
